Thanks to our compassionate supporters, this past January — exactly 10 years since the devastating January 2010 Haiti earthquake — we reached our Rebuilding Hope 2020 goal of five million dollars! With this support, we have been able to build two homes for orphaned children, educate 3,000 children in 10 Christian schools, build kitchens and start school lunch programs, and fund the construction of Camp Hope at our Thomazeau Hope Center. For the children we have been able to reach, the change in their lives has been truly significant.
As we look ahead to the next 10 years, we have met with our leaders in Haiti to identify challenges and opportunities to enhance the Christian care, education, and training for all of our sponsored children. I am pleased to announce today that the result of this collaborative effort is Project Hope 2030 — a 10-year, $30M infrastructure and endowment campaign.
Project Hope 2030 includes capital funding to build Christian secondary schools which will be accessible to all our sponsored children, construct school nurse offices in all our schools, expand school lunch programs to 5/day/week for all our schoolchildren, provide vocational training for all our orphaned teens, and expand after-school training programs.
This year, a vital initiative of Project Hope 2030 is to complete Phase 1 of an urgently needed 960 square foot health clinic at the Hope Center. The clinic will include a doctor and nurse’s office, three treatment rooms, a lab, a pharmacy, and an educational room. It will also serve as a base for visiting US medical teams.
The Coronavirus pandemic is just reaching Haiti’s shores and we have many children suffering from preventable and/or treatable conditions such as skin and eye infections, minor burns, diarrhea, dehydration, and urinary tract infections. There is no health clinic in the Hope Center area of Thomazeau and few families can afford to take their sick children to the Thomazeau community clinic several miles away.
The clinic will house a school nurse office for Louslande Dorcius (see photo above), who grew up as an HFHC-sponsored child at our Cazeau Christian Orphanage. Louslande does her best to treat children now in an empty classroom and, when necessary, arrange transportation for the children to go with their parents to see a doctor. Unfortunately, many parents are unavailable during the day as they struggle to provide an income for their family, and many do not own a cell phone. This leaves many children without timely medical care.
The Phase 1 cost of the clinic is $100,000. What a huge blessing this will be to the school, church, and community! For more information on the Hope Center Clinic and other Project Hope 2030 plans for this year, visit our Project Hope 2030 page.